Wandering Paysanos

State Order and Subaltern Experience in Buenos Aires During the Rosas Era

Edición de la obra Wandering Paysanos

A pioneering examination of the experiences of peasants and peons, or paysanos, in the Buenos Aires province during Juan Manuel de Rosas's regime (1829-1852), Wandering Paysanos is one of the first studies to consider Argentina's history from a subalternist perspective. The distinguished Argentine historian Ricardo D. Salvatore situates the paysanos as mobile job seekers within an expanding, competitive economy as he highlights the points of contention between the peasants and the state: questions of military service, patriotism, crime, and punishment. He argues that only through a reconstruction of the different subjectivities of paysanos - as workers, citizens, soldiers, and family members - can a new understanding of postindependence Argentina be achieved.